Alan Williams, a former procurement officer with the Department of National Defence in Ottawa, said a Selected Acquisition Report on the F-35 that the U.S. Department of Defense submitted to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on March 29, five days before Auditor General Michael Ferguson tabled a scathing report on Canada’s management of its role in the F-35 project, shows the acquisition cost to Canada for the planes the government plans to buy has climbed to $88.7-million per jet, more than $13-million above the purchase price the government used in its last public estimate.
As well, Mr. Williams said a little-noticed paragraph in Mr. Ferguson’s April 3 report shows the government has had secret plans to eventually acquire a total of 79 F-35s, including 14 that Mr. Ferguson disclosed were being planned as replacement aircraft because of attrition.
Mr. Ferguson’s report, in a brief reference that was overshadowed by the auditor general’s charge that National Defence hid $10-billion in projected operating and maintenance costs from Parliament, said National Defence had informed Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government “of the need to consider the requirement for attrition at a later date.”
Mr. Williams told The Hill Times that the sentence poses the issue of additional aircraft a possibility at some date, but he pointed out that that the subsequent sentence in the report suggests the further acquisitions are inevitable.
“The cost of replacement aircraft is not included in the life-cycle estimates for this project and will be treated as a separate project in the future,” the report states.
A spokesperson for Associate Defence Minister Julian Fantino (Vaughan, Ont.) said the government will stay within the $9-billion budget it has set for acquisition of the fighters and noted no purchase contract has been signed. National Defence is currently set to begin acquiring the F-35s in 2017, according to a statement Mr. Fantino made to defence industry officials last month. But he also said at the time Canada will be able to adjust the schedule if necessary because of production delays the prime contractor for the project, Lockheed Martin of the U.S., is experiencing.
Mr. Fantino's communications director, Chris McCluskey, noted the government has responded to Mr. Ferguson's report by freezing the acquisition spending envelope at its current level and is establishing a new secretariat in the Public Works Department to coordinate the project, as well as other measures.
"We will not proceed with a purchase until the seven steps we have outlined are completed and developmental work is sufficiently advanced," Mr. McCluskey said. He added the government will in the end provide Canada's air force "with the aircraft they need to do the jobs we ask of them."
Mr. Williams, in an interview last Friday, said the government has been “deceitful” by failing to disclose the likely need for an additional 14 F-35s, at some point during the lifetime of the fleet the government plans to begin acquiring as early as 2017, and the cost should be included in the estimates National Defence presents to Parliament and the public.
“To me, that is the most unethical action by the government to date, or certainly one of them,” said Mr. Williams.
“That’s where the government is basically saying they’re going to be buying another 14, and they’re going to be treating it as a separate project in the future,” he said.
“The auditor general found out that while the government continually talked about buying 65, it really has plans to buy 79, and it’s going to do that later on,” Mr. Williams said. “I can’t think of an anything more deceitful than to hide from Canadians the cost of 79 [aircraft] versus the cost of 65. I’ve never seen that done that way before.”
The extra planes, and the latest U.S. estimates of F-35 costs, will be among the issues opposition MPs plan to take up this week in a Commons inquiry into the purchase. A planning session by the House Public Accounts Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, with the first witness hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Mr. Ferguson found that the Department of National Defence failed to exercise “due diligence” as it managed the program from 2006 onward as Canada became more involved in the U.S. fighter project, and that the department did not inform Parliament of the true costs. The auditor general also said DND failed to exercise “due diligence,” as it essentially went along with irregular procurement procedures that National Defence imposed.
University of Ottawa professor Philippe Lagassé, an expert on military procurement, told The Hill Times last week that Mr. Harper and his Cabinet had to be aware of what was going on and were “complicit” in the procurement shortcuts and decisions that were made without proper preparation and background information.
Mr. Ferguson disclosed National Defence internal estimates that pegged the total coast of the F-35 project at $25-billion over 20 years, even as it told Parliament the estimated cost was $14.7-billion, including a total of $9-billion for all the capital acquisition costs.
The U.S. Defense Department’s Selected Acquisition Report, a copy of which The Hill Times obtained from the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, shows that the acquisition price per F-35 for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines has climbed to $137-million, including the plane’s engine. That includes early research and development costs that Canada and other countries involved in the project do not have to pay.
Contrary to Mr. MacKay’s suggestion that the F-35s will have the same level of maintenance and operating costs as Canada’s current fleet of CF-18 fighter jets, the report shows that the U.S. Defense Department now expects operation, support and maintenance costs will be $32 per flying hour, 42 per cent higher than the support and maintenance costs for U.S. F-16 fighter jets.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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